In all this there are certain familiar mechanisms which constitute almost a routine of manipulation for the manufacture of paradoxes.  One such mechanical process is the play with the derivatives of words.  Thus he reminds us that the journalist is, in the literal and derivative sense, a journalist, while the missionary is an eternalist.  Similarly “lunatic,” “evolution,” “progress,” “reform,” are etymologically tortured into the utterance of the most forcible and surprising truths.  This curious word-play was a favourite method with Ruskin; and it has the disadvantage in Mr. Chesterton which it had in the earlier critic.  It appears too clever to be really sound, although it must be confessed that it frequently has the power of startling us into thoughts that are valuable and suggestive.

Another equally simple process is that of simply reversing sentences and ideas.  “A good bush needs no wine.”  “Shakespeare (in a weak moment, I think) said that all the world is a stage.  But Shakespeare acted on the much finer principle that a stage is all the world.”  Perhaps the most brilliant example that could be quoted is the plea for the combination of gentleness and ferocity in Christian character.  When the lion lies down with the lamb, it is constantly assumed that the lion becomes lamblike.  “But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb.  That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion, instead of the lion eating the lamb.”

By this process it is possible to attain results which are extraordinarily brilliant in themselves and fruitful in suggestion.  It is a process not difficult to learn, but the trouble is that you have to live up to it afterwards, and defend many curious propositions which may have been arrived at by its so simple means.  Take, for instance, the sentence about the stage being all the world.  That is undeniably clever, and it contains an idea.  But it is a haphazard idea, arrived at by a short-cut, and not by the high road of reasonable thinking.  Sometimes a truth may be reached by such a short-cut, but such paradoxes are occasionally no better than chartered errors.

Yet even when they are that, it may be said in their favour that they startle us into thought.  And truly Mr. Chesterton is invaluable as a quickener and stimulator of the minds of his readers.  Moreover, by adopting the method of paradox, he has undoubtedly done one remarkable thing.  He has proved what an astonishing number of paradoxical surprises there actually are, lying hidden beneath the apparent commonplace of the world.  Every really clever paradox astonishes us not merely with the sense of the cleverness of him who utters it, but with the sense of how many strange coincidences exist around us, and how many sentences, when turned outside in, will yield new and startling truths.  However much we may suspect that the performance we are watching is too clever to be trustworthy, yet after all the world does appear to lend itself to such treatment.